


when I think about you

by sugarboat



Series: Anon Prompt Writing [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, Male Solo, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, the jonelias is only implied, via the tape recorders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:14:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26148529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarboat/pseuds/sugarboat
Summary: Jon has trouble sleeping.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard | Jonah Magnus/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, The Beholding/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Series: Anon Prompt Writing [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1889935
Comments: 6
Kudos: 55





	when I think about you

**Author's Note:**

> 100 words of voyeurism.

Jon is alone in his room. He’s been watching his ceiling for a while now. It’s late enough that cars have stopped passing by his complex. Notable for the absence of their lights shifting through his blinds, crawling across the dark of his room.

He can’t sleep. Not a particularly surprising state to find himself in, and considering the content of his dreams, he thinks it’s understandable. No less irritating for the fact, no less pulling him between two constants. Dread and fear burning up the line of his physical exhaustion. It makes him imagine old cartoon images, the trailing tail of a stick of dynamite being chewed up by a spiting, angry spark.

Jon sighs and rolls onto his side. Despite what others might have to say about him, even he can tell when he’s being melodramatic.

He needs to sleep. He… want is a strong word for it, but he would like to sleep. No matter the nausea induced by the prospect.

He can’t remember the last time he slept well. Back when he thought dreaming of a graveyard every night was somehow normal. Mundane side effects of working with the weird and unnatural. He’s had nightmares before, obviously, even recurrent ones. Could he be blamed for taking so long to notice what was happening?

Of course he could. And what does it say about him, now, that he thinks to those nights as his last good bit of sleep, and not of something before this began?

He sits himself up in bed, frustrated. Georgie used to tell him to exercise. When she’d catch him up at odd hours and flick his ear, and offer to help expunge any extraneous reserves of energy he’d managed to conserve. It hadn’t always worked, but it had been a welcome distraction.

Jon looks down to his lap. Where his hands have already sluggishly drifted. It feels ridiculous to palm himself through his thin sheet and briefs. Soft against his own hand and he tries to conceptualize it as an idle motion as he runs through his list of options.

Is this actually likely to help? He thinks of the snap and drain of orgasm, and the answer is a succinct maybe. If it ends up being just a waste of his time, well, it can join the rest of this sleepless night in that.

Jon shifts around until he’s lying comfortably on his back again, half propped on pillows. Sheets puddled like dark, still waters around his thighs while eases his cock free. Watches himself for a bit, unimpressed at the slow pull of his own fingers, the gentle shivering of nerves coming alive. He’s really not narcissistic enough to enjoy making a show for his own entertainment.

Some part of this thoughts snag on that, because he might not enjoy it for his own sake but the thought, suddenly, of someone else’s eyes on him sends an electric pulse through his entire body, and Jon immediately shies away from the line of thinking. And because the universe is cruel, he hears the distinct click of a tape recorder depressing, the white noise whir of its tapes.

“Really?” Jon asks, of himself, of his- his _god_ , watching from whatever space it lurks. Of Elias. “Do you honestly expect me to- what, masturbate for you?”

It’s infuriating. As if he needed another reminder that his life is not his own anymore. That the thing threading itself through him, into him, is inescapable. Watching him.

His cock is still hard.

“So, what? Is this it? I have a- a wank, and you just listen in?” Jon’s face feels like it’s on fire. His chest and stomach are twisting, stinging and tight like he’s swallowed nettles.

“Or am I supposed to narrate for you?” Jon continues. Angry, and getting breathless as he keeps moving his hand. “Make this into a proper statement?”

He doesn’t do that. There’s no fear here, or at least, not the kind of fear that transmutes itself into words. Just a deep, resonant ache that settles inside him somewhere, that has already become lodged there. It takes what should be a rote, momentary pleasure and remakes into something awful, frisson against his nerves. Excitement he refuses to acknowledge the source of.

“Can you see me?” he asks between panting breaths. Addressing Beholding, or Elias, whatever the difference between the two is. “Are you- are you watching?”

Usually, usually – there’s nothing usual about this – he doesn’t think about anything at all. Stresses his body to completion, sparking off the other impressions along his body. Free hand prodding at bruises or lacerations, mindless in seeking sensation. Attention flitting with indecision across scenarios that hold an equal lack of appeal.

Now, of course, isn’t it obvious. He closes his eyes and sees more eyes. Feels them like a physical caress, the weight of their gaze. The tight prickling along the back of his neck growing to unbearable heights. His skin crawls with it, thrums with it like a plucked cord.

Some part of him recognizes the noises he’s making. Far from the quiet, furtive sounds that are more typical of his bedroom. His own harsh breathing, little half-bitten vocalizations that get trapped in his throat when he twists his hand, squeezes his fingers.

There’s a pattern to how his lips and tongue move when he comes across his stomach. He knows, distantly, what he’s saying, but it’s washed away in the tide of the tension knotted tight and suddenly snapped inside him.

It’s tempting not to move. His body and mind both lax and sleep is like the lapping of waves against a nearby shore. He can almost feel it ebbing and flowing at his fingertips.

But it would leave a disgusting mess for him to deal with later, and Jon eases himself upward with a palm cupped cautiously around the splatter of come threatening to drip down his pelvis. Leaving his room makes him pass by the night table holding his tape recorder. Its red light unblinking in the dark of his room.

“…Statement ends.”

He jabs the stop button down harder than it maybe deserves.


End file.
